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Date Posted: 09:34:16 07/12/02 Fri
Author: moondreamer
Subject: Dreams - 4
In reply to: moondreamer 's message, "Dreams (PG13)" on 16:27:20 06/29/02 Sat

Dreams – 4

Twenty minutes later Sara highly regretted her impulsive decision. She stood in the middle of the card store; feeling totally overwhelmed. She knew it had been a while for her but, jeez o’petes. She looked around in amazement. There seemed to be people everywhere; all of them laughing and smiling and showing cards to each other. People at the register were buying handfuls of cards at a time. Did they really have that many people to send cards to? What was up with that?

Sara cast her disturbed glance around the rest of the store. Why would people buy bears dressed like humans? And what was with some of the other figurines, little kids made out of porcelain with large eyes? Apart from being something that undoubtedly would require enormous amounts of dusting the only other purpose she could come up with for them was target practice. She’d bet they’d make a great noise when a bullet shattered them.

With a heavy sigh she turned her attention from the amazingly varied display back to her unsure purpose and tried to find the “Thank you” card section. She bypassed the “from the cat” and “from the dog” section, that was kinda cool; and went by the section for birthdays, at least that was close to what she remembered; a section full of grandma type cards, all hearts and flowers and kittens. Ugh, she thought. She had always hated that kind.

Wow, the “I-really-hope-you-die-now-that-we’ve-broken-up” selection of cards had certainly increased. Right next to it was a section for those who had divorced and still sent friendly greetings. She thought that was kind of weird. Lot’s of “Significant Other”, both male/male and female/female stuff. Man, there were sections for cards regarding stuff she didn’t even know about. What were some of the strange holidays they were selling cards for? Did people really celebrate this stuff? Was there really this much going on in other people’s lives she didn’t know about?

Finally Sara made her way over to the cards she wanted. Only to stand there puzzled once again. Number one, was she really thinking she was going to get Ian a card? What would it read? Gee, thanks for breaking into my apartment? Or maybe Thanks for stalking? Did they make one that read, “Thanks for chasing away my nightmarish visions brought on by wearing this freaking bracelet”? She shook her head in dismay. Maybe this just wasn’t such a great idea after all.

Still, she didn’t understand just how rough her manners apparently seemed to others. Hearing those two Officers’ comments today had really struck a nerve deep inside her. Was that really how people saw her? She knew she had a bad tendency to focus on the work on hand, but did she really come off like that? So sullen and unappreciative. If that was the case, then why did Ian keep coming back every single morning? Did he just like abuse?

Yet, if she thought about it some more, she really didn’t give Ian abuse during their brief moments in the morning. She didn’t talk to him, hell; she didn’t even look at him. Her embarrassment colored her face as she realized that all she did was turn and cling to him like a limpet until he soothed her and she went to sleep. Talk about using somebody! Any other time she was tossing verbal darts and him and irritably telling him to go away. But when she needed him, he was always there. Sara didn’t like the look inside herself she was taking and turned her attention back towards the card display. This really was shaping up to be not such a great idea.

She picked up a couple of cards and looked at them. There was a smiley face Thank you, there were several animal type Thank you cards. A few bad puns and a few that were just so excruciatingly syrupy they made her teeth hurt just to read them. This was not going well. She was looking at a few on the bottom row when a salesperson came up to help her.

“Hi!” The woman had an extremely perky voice that immediately put Sara’s back up. “Can I help you find anything in particular?” She blinked her eyes at Sara and smiled vacuously. Sara almost rolled her eyes, and then stopped. She couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to work here, surrounded by all this stuff with eyes that looked at you. Creepy! Deciding to give her the benefit of the doubt Sara spoke up.

“Uh, yeah.” Sara’s voice seemed even lower and huskier than usual compared to Miss Perky. “Do you have any plain black cards? Ones that are blank inside?”

The saleswoman blinked again, this time in apparent dismay. “Looking for 40th birthday cards? You need to go to the Over-the-hill section.”

Her good intentions towards Her Perkyness forgotten, Sara was about to explain further when Jake came walking in.

“You done yet, Sara?” He enquired. “You’ve been in here a long time and I’m really getting hungry. Whatcha lookin’ for anyway?”

The saleswoman gave Jake an appreciative once-over with her eyes and turned her sparkling attention towards him.

“She’s not in the right section for over-forty cards. She needs to go over there.” As she pointed to the back of the store she seemingly dismissed Sara as “over-the-hill” and smiled at Jake. “Surely, it’s not for you? You look so young…and fit.”

Jake smiled back and instead of continuing her search for a card Sara watched in disgust as Jake proceeded to not only get the saleswoman’s telephone number and address; but also set-up a lunch date for tomorrow.

Giving up in disgust, she headed towards the front of the store. Realizing that Jake was not following her, and was still chatting with the sales help from hell. Putting her fingers to her lips Sara let out a piercing whistle.

“Hey, Rookie. Let’s get it gear, huh?” Sara smiled in satisfaction as the loud whistle rang through the store. She knew she was sublimating her feelings of discomfort with her rude actions, but she didn’t really care. She let her leather coat drop open and her holster peek out; enjoying the shocked look on several shoppers’ faces. Sometimes, she thought, you take what you can get.

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